So I’m a couple of days out from participating in an archaeological dig in Turkey and I’m still trying to process what happened. I mean, I know that I moved literally tons of soil, stood out in the boiling hot sun and ate and drank more bread and tea than I have in the rest of my life combined, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I did something more than that, just what exactly? Let’s start with some questions and see if I can figure it out along the way.
What did I learn? Well, I learned that Turkey is a beautiful country and that they have a sweet tooth that puts America to shame. I learned that while I’m usually not much of an ocean/sea person, I’ll swim in the Mediterranean if I really have to. And I learned that people from different countries and cultures are far more similar than one would think. During a discussion one night, the question was asked, what right do we have as Americans to work on an excavation in Turkey. And I think I learned that the answer to that is simply that we were helping to uncover a little bit of our shared human experience on this earth. Maybe that sounds a little grandiose but I believe there is some truth to it. Our cultures didn’t developed completely separate from one another but rather with enormous influence. The Hittites, Greeks, Romans and thousands of local populations meshed together in different ways and at different times and then flowed west to influence and form our culture.
So I have one question down, which starts to help me understand what I just spent a month of my life doing, but let’s try another. What was my most memorable experience? Well I don’t even have to make snarky comments about that, it’s easy. It was when I helped excavate a grave. We know that the remains are adult because of the size of the bones but we don’t know gender, although I’ll call him male for the sake of this post. Someone cared enough about his burial to place his body. His legs were up to the sky, his head turned over his right shoulder, his left hand also over his right shoulder and his left hand covering his stomach region. There were no grave goods so, thus far, we have been able to determine very little about him, although he appears to have been buried with no feet. But why did I choose this experience? I saw some pretty neat things, but this was special in a different way. We know that people inhabited Antiochia because of all the structures but in that moment I was holding on to a person who presumably once called Antiochia home. That meant that he had parents, maybe a family of a wife and kids, things he feared, things he wanted. To me, that is remarkable.
Now, one last series of questions. How has this experience changed my life goals, what advice would I give to future participants, and would I do it again. Well, the most strait forward answer is I have no idea, about anything, but let’s see if I can give a little more than that. Throughout my career-planning process, I have always struggled to balance what I want to do with practicality. For example, if I had my way I would spend the rest of my life traveling the world and writing fantasy novels, but right now, at least, that isn’t a practical option. But back to the question, archaeology. In some ways, archaeology is the closest I can get to that, but instead of traveling the world and writing stories, I would be traveling and discovering the stories of the past. I have to admit, that’s actually quite appealing. It would be incredibly hard work, both mentally and physically, I learned that over the past month, but it would also be incredibly rewarding. So bottom line, is it something that I am interested in? Yes. Is it something I am interested in doing again? Yes. Is it what I want to do with my life? I wish I knew. I think it’s an easy jump from there to recommend this experience, or a similar one, to nearly anyone. Even if a person knows what they want to do, and it’s not archaeology, working in the environment of a dig site in a foreign country has the potential to teach a person a lot about what they want and what is important to them. And if I had to give one piece of advice to a person participating in the future, it would probably be something along the lines of to fully engage in the cultures around you because you might learn something new
So now that I have written all of that, can I answer my very fist question? What exactly did I just spend the last month of my life doing? I think there are two answers to that question. Academically, I helped uncover information that will start to provide information about a people that inhabited Rough Cilicia over 1500 years ago. My other answer is that I helped bring two different cultures together. The last weekend we were at the site, the people of the village that the site is located in invited the entire excavation team to the circumcision ceremony of a young boy. What ensued was several hours of young American college students dancing with the people of a rural Turkish village. It was pretty special. And it reminds me of something I said earlier. There just might be more similarities than differences between our cultures.